Healthcare systems have attempted to provide safe, risk-free environments for patient safety. Nevertheless, ensuring safety can be complex, considering that the healthcare network is complicated. Nurses constitute the most significant portion of healthcare workers, so they have a critical role in ensuring safety. Events like prescription errors, nosocomial infections, hospital falls, and unprecedented deaths could decrease in prevalence through quality and safety enhancement practices. According to Avraham and Schanzenbach (2017), about one million persons in the United States are affected by medical errors annually. Furthermore, medical errors claim the lives of 210,000–440,000 persons in the United States (Avraham & Schanzenbach, 2017). Therefore, there is a need for evidence-based practice to enhance patient safety.
Analysis of Current Issue
Considering this perspective, the issue of interest to me regarding safety risks related to the administration of medication is prescribing errors. Among the commonest healthcare challenges regarding medication errors are those on drug prescriptions. Prescription errors involve choosing the wrong medication for a certain patient regarding form, concentration, route, quantity, and dosage. Besides, it might give rise to allergic reactions in patients in response to erroneously prescribed medications. Therefore, determining strategies helping to minimize prescription errors helps avoid unnecessary issues that might cost healthcare workers their practice permits and patients their lives. An interest in medication prescription errors is motivated by the fact that such errors give rise to many mortality cases. For example, various drugs carry varying properties affecting different patients in varied ways when erroneously prescribed. Although other medication error causes exist, prescription errors are the commonest causes, having deadly side effects. Lastly, this investigation assists nursing students in learning much more and improving their skills, helping to minimize the prevalent occurrence of prescription errors when practicing in the future.
Factors Leading to a Specific Patient Safety Risk
From the current issue of interest, various factors may give rise to errors in drug prescription within the healthcare system. For instance, healthcare workers could suffer distraction, erroneously reading the name of a particular drug (Härkänen et al., 2018). For example, they might read diltiazem instead of diazepam, adversely affecting patients according to its adverse effects. It additionally affects the functionality of the organ in the patient engaged in the drug’s metabolism and excretion. Moreover, healthcare workers might get tired when giving the medication, which mainly arises when they are overworked due to inadequate staffing. Additional prescription error causes include insufficient information about the patient, inadequate drug knowledge, and poor understanding of the specific drug’s mode of action.
Evidence-Based and Best-Practice Solutions to Improve Patient Safety
In addressing the factors predisposing to patient safety risk, several strategies based on evidence and known to enhance the safety of patients regarding errors in drug prescription do exist. For example, many mistakes can be avoided by incorporating a multidisciplinary team for patient care (Vijayakumar et al., 2019). Ultimately, a good grasp of drug information such as the route of administration, absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and adverse effects additionally helps minimize prescription errors (Vijayakumar et al., 2019). Moreover, some errors happen when healthcare workers have a significant workload, making it necessary to develop suitable strategies to enhance the nurse-to-patient ratio, minimizing the prevalence of burnout. Besides, motivating nurses to engage in continuous medical education (CME) helps them to remain up-to-date regarding new patient care techniques. CME could be attained through specialization promotion, exchange programs, and research.
Moreover, various other evidence-based techniques could help minimize medication prescription error prevalence. These include promoting education on the proper prescription for the prescribers to ensure that they are up-to-date with the prescription of different medications (Vijayakumar et al., 2019). Additionally, adopting prescription-aiding technologies to assist clinicians while prescribing drugs and engaging pharmacists in prescription education, drug reconciliation, and other partnership levels can help (Baldoni et al., 2019). Pharmacist involvement in caring for patients minimizes medication prescription error occurrence. Pharmacist assistance has been known to mitigate prescription mistakes in cancer treatment by nearly 25%, potentially increasing patient safety (Baldoni et al., 2019). Thus, pharmacists have an essential role in reducing patient harm occurring through errors regarding drug prescriptions. Furthermore, to prevent mistakes in drug prescription, constant nurse training on patient safety, drug prescription, and administration, informing patients’ loved ones on the implication of prescription errors could help. Lastly, careful storage of drugs while segregating some medications and the administration of drugs by experienced nurses could additionally minimize errors in drug prescription (Billstein-Leber et al., 2018). Indeed, several strategies exist to ensure patient safety regarding medication administration.
How Nurses Can Help Coordinate Care to Increase Patient Safety
Concerning evidence-based and best practices, nursing professionals play an essential role in coordinating care to enhance the safety of their patients. Establishing and detailing the specific risk elements, using techniques based on evidence to enhance patients’ safety, and care coordination are essential roles of baccalaureate nurses (Murray, 2017). Nurses need to understand safety bodies like the NPSGs program, QSEN, and IOM to champion proper patient care and safety. Nursing professionals help in care coordination by passing information related to patient care to other healthcare team members and practicing seamless care transition (WHO, 2018). Additionally, they work with several clinicians to establish a proactive and customized plan of care unique to each patient’s needs. Moreover, nurses assist patients in achieving their healthcare objectives, such as connecting them with community resources (WHO, 2018). The health reform aims to improve patients’ satisfaction and quality of treatment, improve public health, and reduce treatment costs and expenditures. Care coordination is considered the foundation for accomplishing this goal.
Moreover, it can be daunting to consider overhauling the whole healthcare network. An example is diabetic patient care, considering diabetes is an expensive, common chronic disease. Healthcare professionals on the care team include doctors, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, social workers, and dietitians. Nurses who care for patients who have diabetes could assist them in realizing favorable outcomes through care coordination. It is critical to establish gaps in care, including yearly diabetes ophthalmologic examinations. Nursing coordination has positive effects such as improving rates of survival, lowering the cost of treatment, increasing patient self-care confidence, and minimizing medical emergencies.
Stakeholders with Whom Nurses Would Coordinate to Drive Safety Enhancements
Lastly, various parties work with nursing professionals in care coordination and enhancing safety among patients. All the parties are responsible for ensuring that patients are not harmed. The general public, patients, individual nurses, nursing educators, administrators, and researchers are all stakeholders in ensuring care coordination and achieving patient safety. Physicians, governments, especially legislative authorities and regulators, professional groups, and accreditation agencies are additionally essential stakeholders in advancing patient safety.
References
Avraham, R., & Schanzenbach, M. M. (2017). Medical malpractice. The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics, 2, 120-147.
Baldoni, S., Amenta, F., & Ricci, G. (2019). Telepharmacy services: Present status and future perspectives: A Review. Medicina, 55(7), 327.
Billstein-Leber, M., Carrillo, C. O. L. J., Cassano, A. T., Moline, K., & Robertson, J. J. (2018). ASHP guidelines on preventing medication errors in hospitals. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, 75(19), 1493–1517.
Härkänen, M., Blignaut, A., & Vehviläinen-Julkunen, K. (2018). Focus group discussions of registered nurses’ perceptions of challenges in the medication administration process.Nursing & Health Sciences, 20(4), 431–437.
Murray, E. (2017). Nursing leadership and management: for patient safety and quality care. FA Davis.
Vijayakumar, S., Duggar, W. N., Packianathan, S., Morris, B., & Yang, C. C. (2019). Chasing zero harm in radiation oncology: Using pre-treatment Peer Review. Frontiers in Oncology, 9.